Community Foundation of the Ozarks

The Community Foundation of the Ozarks is again teaming up with Ozarks Food Harvest and the Walmart State Giving Program to tackle the chronic hunger problems that affect our region.

The 2^nd Annual Ozarks Million Dollar Hunger Challenge kicked off at a news conference at Ozarks Food Harvest today. The Walmart Foundation State Giving Program pledged a $125,000 grant toward a 1:1 match with regional food pantries served by Ozarks Food Harvest.

The participating food pantries were selected in 27 communities that have CFO affiliate foundations so that those foundations could offer fundraising support, community grantmaking awards or other types of assistance to partner with their local food banks.

“This is a great way to address hunger across one-third of the state of Missouri using a great trio of partners,” OFH President and CEO Bart Brown said.

He also discussed a new analysis of local “food insecurity” levels that support anecdotal information and a 2010 Hunger Study. The analysis shows that many people facing “food insecurity” have income and/or resources that make them ineligible for assistance programs. Many of them are people who have lost jobs, but still have homes or cars that count as assets.

“More and more clients who come to food pantries are the unemployed middle class who need assistance,” Brown said. “Technically, they’re not poor, but they don’t have any money.”

Through Ozarks Food Harvest’s buying program, the $250,000 in potential funds from the challenge grant and matching funds will leverage about $1 million worth, or 2.5 million pounds, of food for the participating pantries, food banks and mobile food banks.

The first Million Dollar Hunger Challenge was completed last year when 19 CFO affiliates raised $105,000, which was matched with $100,000 from the Walmart State Foundation.

CFO President Brian Fogle said this represents another example where charitable dollars are filling the gaps created by decreased public funding at all levels. He said this model works well because it directly serves residents in the communities where the money will be raised.

“That is philanthropy at its best,” Fogle said.

Becky Wood, Walmart’s Senior Foundation Manager from Bentonville, Ark., said the company’s State Giving Councils are comprised of local associates who determine the best use of foundation resources for  their states.

“It’s great to be a partner with you in Springfield,” she said.

Humanitarian Award founder Jewell Thompson Schweitzer with 2010 recipient Doug Pitt

Care to Learn Founder Doug Pitt was honored as the 2010 Humanitarian today for his creation of a program to provide students with basic food, health and hygiene needs that began in Springfield and has now expanded to Bolivar, Ozark, Nixa and Republic.

More than 130 people honored Pitt at today’s luncheon for Care to Learn’s response in fulfilling more than 36,300 cases of need since he created it in 2008 with start-up support from Springfield businessman Jim D. Morris and the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

“A community needs to take care of its own,” Pitt said in his remarks after accepting the award from Jewell Thompson Schweitzer, a longtime Community Foundation of the Ozarks supporter who established the Humanitarian award. “We should be very proud of the collaborative spirit that goes on every day in our community.”

The Humanitarian honor includes a $3,000 cash award, which Pitt said he will divide evenly among the five Care to Learn chapters.

The 2010 award marks the 21^st year of honoring humanitarians in the Ozarks. Mrs. Schweitzer established the award to pay tribute to individuals who place service to others as the primary motivating force in their lives. The 2009 award was presented to Oregon County ranchers and brothers Roger D. “Dusty” Shaw, Jr., a CFO board member, and William Shaw, for their philanthropic work in south-central Missouri.

Pitt was nominated for the award by friend and businessman Bobby Allison, Drury University President Todd Parnell, and SRC Holdings Corp. President Jack Stack.

Parnell described Pitt, the co-owner of ServiceWorld Computer Center in Springfield, as someone with “the heart of a philanthropist” who also has the good business sense to run an effective program. Allison chided Pitt about his golf game, saying he doesn’t have time to improve it because he’s busy working on the plight of those less fortunate in both the Ozarks and around the world.

In addition to his work on Care to Learn, Pitt was honored for his role as a goodwill ambassador to Tanzania and his support for construction of wells for clean drinking water in Africa as well as his role as co-chair of the Homelessness Task Force in Springfield.

CFO President Brian Fogle concluded the luncheon by thanking all the people who have supported Care to Learn since its founding.

“Doug Pitt saw children without shoes, without coats and even without shampoo, and said ‘Yes, I can do something about this’,” Fogle said. “Others of you offer support with your time, talent, and resources in supporting CFO, and other non-profits in our community.

“We have 100 reasons not to get involved, or let someone else do it,” he said. “But thank God you here in this room have hearts that refuse to let you look at a first-grader without a coat on a sub-zero day, and tell him or her, ‘no’.”

At a recent Ozarks Food Harvest Mobile Pantry in Joplin, 150 people received eggs, cheese, meat, bread, cereal, Gatorade, and snack foods to feed their families

CFO affiliates raised $105,000 and received $100,000 in matching funds from the Walmart State Foundation to fight chronic hunger in their communities.

A total of 19 affiliates successfully completed the Challenge Grant, which is being channeled primarily through the Ozarks Food Harvest, which has a 28-county service area that largely mirrors the CFO’s region.

The CFO affiliates that completed the Hunger Challenge are: Aurora, Bolivar, Cassville, DACO (Dade County), Dallas County, El Dorado Springs, Finley River (Ozark area), Houston, Jacks Fork, Southwest Missouri (Carthage-Joplin area), Marshfield, Nixa, Oregon County, Seymour, Stockton, Table Rock Lake, Taney County, and West Plains.

The Wal-Mart State Foundation State Giving Program selected the Ozarks Food Harvest for its challenge grant program last year, which began in response to the national report – “Hunger in America 2010” – describing the extent to which hunger plagues Ozarks communities. An estimated 155,000 Ozarkers face chronic hunger issues, according to the report.

For more information, see the full  Hunger Challenge news release .